Groundbreaking - 1958 Chevrolet Impala

General Motors' 1958 Chevrolet Impala was a high-water mark for style

Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

With every glance, the 1958 Impala surprises you. Was it over the top, too much of too much for the everyman Chevrolet name to handle? Maybe it was, because while it started as a Bel Air trim level, it was certainly too much car to be just a Bel Air for long.

Article continues after advertisement

We first saw the Impala name on a show car and, as far out as it was, elements of the prototype Impala did make their way into the production car, including the panoramic wraparound glass, smooth interior and distinctive C-pillar cant.
"We had a 'theme' car for the 1956 Motorama that was called 'Impala;' it had a Corvette-like grille, a distinctive roof treatment and if I remember, a suspended instrument panel, with a gullwing effect around the cluster," said Impala's chief of interior design, Ed Donaldson, in a 1980 interview with Hemmings' Special Interest Autos magazine.
"There were some proposals for the '58 that were much more 'Corvette-y' than what actually came about, one of which was the Corvette-style grille," said Chevrolet chief designer Clare Mackichan in the 1980 interview. "We eventually took it another way--perhaps it was felt then that it shouldn't have too much of a Corvette image...it might have hurt the Corvette."
In all its forms, the 1958 Impala is big and confident. As one person said, it's as though MacKichan took every element he liked, and said "if one is good, many is better." Only offered in sport coupe and convertible body styles for 1958, the Impala has a pair of fender-top ornaments, double headlamps with matching double parking lamps, triple taillamps, six holes in the steering wheel, eight chrome spears, 10 lines on the rocker moldings, 12 horizontal lines and 16 vertical chrome accents in four sets of four. No person who bought one was ever in doubt that they were getting a heck of a lot of car.
Where many modern designers seem to feel that bizarrely intersecting lines that conflict with panels and trim are somehow attractive, MacKichan and his team, who, after all, had to answer to the ubiquitous Harley Earl, created art. "Everything really came from a sketch somewhere along the line, and Harley Earl was a great one for picking up sketches--whether it came from that studio, or some other studio, he would share it from one to another if he wanted to use the idea," said MacKichan.
It would have been easy, and maybe even conventional, just to hang jewelry all over a pig and call it done, but the Impala is more than just some glitter. Even the attractive but nonfunctional roof vents were a bone of contention for the design team: "We had meant for that to be an actual, functioning scoop to let air out, and it was that way for a while--then they discovered, I believe, that it actually let air in, which was not what was desired," said MacKichan. "Maybe it was just a way to reduce costs. I don't know....but at any rate, it was made dummy and that really bothered us, because we didn't want any dummy things of any sort on the car."
Even if you're right in front of it, you're going to notice the changing-arc fins first, bursting out of the car's flanks at the reverse C-pillar. They're unmistakable and extraordinary, and they shouldn't work. It's a big, barrel-shaped car with bulges everywhere, and the fins break that theme, bumping up out of the trunk cutlines, sweeping forward well into the passenger compartment, and cutting back into the quarter panels. It's only because of the unusually luxurious and selfish proportions of the car that they do succeed--that any of it succeeds. "There are all those back-and-forth angles in the roofline and side trim," said feature car owner Bob Sekelsky, himself a Pratt Institute-bred designer. "Every bit of the car is sculptured and formed into an amazing design."
The Impala has about a 60:40 ratio of hood and rear decklid to passenger compartment, which contributes to the forward-leaning attitude of the whole car. GM's own related 1958 Buick and Oldsmobile, with thick trim along the rear fenders, conventional C-pillars and high-domed hoods, lacked the unique combination of strength and grace that makes the Chevrolet succeed, although the Pontiac Bonneville did have a similar style.
"After we'd completed the 'A' body, which was for all practical purposes the Bel Air, the base car for '58, we began work on the 'executive' or 'low coupe,' and we tacked the Impala name on it," said interior designer Donaldson. "The Impala coupe was a true coupe, whereas the coupe in the regular line was an offshoot of the pillared coach. The Impala entailed a different roof, rear quarters and rear-end treatment, lower seating, and the instrument panel was different to accommodate a lower steering column angle."
"At the time there was a lot of simulation of aircraft themes seen. I would presume that we did sketch them--we were very familiar with the shapes and designs of all airplanes, and from time to time we would take little side trips out to look at them, and try to get some inspiration," said MacKichan. "And, of course, there was a deliberate attempt to simulate a Cadillac kind of influence from the early Fifties on, and it was felt that this couldn't hurt Cadillac and would help Chevrolet."
The design starts at the back end and moves forward. The fins rise out of the low trunk and push forward, forcing their way to the rear seat. They stretch the rear glass into a deep, low curve, sink the back of the roof and shove the doors forward, well into the windshield. The side spears carry the faux vents in front of the rear wheels along with them, rather than blowing back from the front. Even the vertical chrome hash marks lean forward, and the sheetmetal overhangs the headlamps.
It's as though a wind blew over the car, stripping away the bulk and awkwardness of the other 1958 GM designs. The taillamps play their part: Like pebbles on a beach, the fins blow around them, leaving them in a little hollow, and the cove follows from there. "The front was pretty straightforward, but the rear had some flair to it--when we put on those three taillamps, we thought we really set the world on fire," said Chuck Jordan, a Chevrolet designer who later took over the design department. Donaldson called it "a very different taillamp configuration--the 'vee' that went toward the center of the car was more rakish; it had separate lamps and the regular line had two in a bezel."
Despite MacKichan's dislike of frippery, the dual parking lamps are just that: only one set works, while the other is decorative.
There was nothing controversial about the Impala interior--it was simply one of the best GM ever rolled into a showroom, and it carried plenty of Motorama styling cues. "We went pretty wild with that, and the three-tone striped pattern on the cloth seat inserts," said Donaldson. "Among the other unique things were the formed, anodized aluminum panels on the doors and interior quarters--that was a real nightmare for Fisher Body because all the body panels had to be an exact color match. You can imagine with four separate pieces of aluminum, the anodizing could turn out in all different values--if they didn't watch it, and they did, conceivably they could have had four different tones in one car"
The 1958 Impala was neither well received nor a good seller, and it was expensive. "It was decided to do it in order to achieve a specific look, and a lot of the reason for that came from Ed Cole, who was the general manager of Chevrolet at the time," said MacKichan. "It was meant to be specific, so that it would really stand out in a crowd, which it did.
"Of course, we in the design staff like to do this sort of thing. I think that we had felt for a long time that you couldn't make a good coupe using all of the things from the sedan: the height, the windshield and side windows, and so on. And so it needed to be specific--one thing just led to another: 'Well, why not add another few panels?' A lot of this came from some good idea sketches that were so intriguing that it was decided to spend the money on it."
"Considering the various design inputs, we were really pleased with the outcome of the 1958 product," said Chevrolet senior designer Carl Renner. "Most of us were sorry to see it go in favor of the new 1959 proposal. We did have a few rather humorous names for certain features of the 1958--we referred to its horizontal fins as 'barrage balloons' and the horizontal fins on the 1959 proposal were sometimes called 'a butterfly tail' or 'seagull.' "
Fifty years later, our eyes have nearly been blinded by decades of increasing blandness and focus-group design. The Impala, once a curiosity, now stands as a monument to the end of the Harley Earl era at GM, and the beginning of the end of the Bel Air line that powered the company through the mid-Fifties.
Bill Mitchell took over from Earl in mid-1958 and, while he created a series of beautiful and beloved cars, they belonged to a new design age. To let your eyes wander along the Impala's intersecting angles is to be reminded what can be accomplished by hand and eye, and the character that's lost in a computer. Bob Sekelsky probably summed it up best when he said, simply, "The look of the car is just so amazing."

This article originally appeared in the March, 2008 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.